The Church of Ireland primate, Dr Robin Eames, has said he does not think people outside Northern Ireland fully realise how important the concept of consent is for the Protestant population. "It's not just a question of consent to their political future," he said. "It's a question of consent to their particular ethos, to their particular culture."
Consent meant more than agreement to a form of government, "it means consent to their future, and none of us can contemplate a future for Northern Ireland in which either community is going to be angry and resentful and depressed".
Speaking on RTE Radio One's This Week yesterday, he said there had been a great deal of soul-searching among all political parties in the North. Within unionism "a tremendous and historic period of heart-searching, research and thinking is going on".
People were realising they had to be sure of where they stood, and that they had to have a clear picture of the way forward. He encouraged that sort of debate because it would lead to confidence. For many years Protestants had not felt they owned the peace process. "There was no feeling of being hands-on to what was happening." This had led to feelings of apprehension and doubt, and that there was some sort of hidden agenda.
The pressure on the Protestant community, as the peace process proceeded, was to try to come to terms with the fact. In a period of violence they knew what their enemy was, they knew what had to be said and what had to be condemned and what had to be dealt with. It was very difficult then to ask a community, which had suffered "almost non-stop violence" for 27 years to come to terms with what he called "the ingredients of peace".
It was not just a question of trying to address the last 27 years, but of trying to address "centuries of misunderstanding, of injustice, centuries of perceptions, but above all centuries of sectarianism", he said. He believed "we are in for a long haul".
Meanwhile, the Press Association reports that Ulster Unionists are to have talks with the Catholic Primate, Archbishop Sean Brady, within the next three weeks.
The meeting, one of a number with the leaders of the four main churches, is part of a consultative process before the party announces if it is prepared to sit down with Sinn Fein once negotiations on Northern Ireland's future get under way on September 15th.
